The video here shows Mabel the robot running. When you run you’re feet actually leave the ground and as you can see in this video, so do Mabel’s feet. I can’t imagine this is easy to accomplish in a robot.
Mabel is a collaboration between Jessy W Grizzle at the University of Michigan and the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon. Mabel can run at a top speed of 6.8 miles an hour.
Link via (The Atlantic)
Flybox is a very thin six blade helicopter made by Skybotix, a spinoff from the Autonomous Systems Lab at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology.
This flying robot comes with ROS installed, uses an ARM 32 bit controller and can last for up to 30 minutes at at time.
Available options include a USB camera, WiFi, XBee and Bluetooth. No word on price yet.
To learn more, check out the free demonstration at Swissnex in San Francisco on September 30,2011.
Harry H. Cheng and Graham Ryland from UC Davis founded a company called Barobo, which has just licensed it’s iMobot modular robot to UC Davis.
“UC Davis is proud of its leadership in engineering inventions such as this modular robot technology. We are very pleased to have partnered with the company founded by two inventors to take this technology to market to provide innovative robotic platform for various applications,” said David McGee, executive director of UC Davis InnovationAccess, which manages intellectual property and licensing issues on behalf of the university.
iMobot is a fully functional robot that can crawl, creep and roll along. While they robot is not built for a specific purpose, it could be used for search & rescue, military or law enforcement applications. UC Davis hopes to commercialize the robot.
Click through for a video.
A spherical robot equipped with a camera may navigate underground pipes of a nuclear reactor by propelling itself with an internal network of valves and pumps. Image: Harry Asada/d'Arbeloff Laboratory
The recent crisis in Japan has spurred the United States and other countries to think harder about nuclear power and safety. Nuclear facilities in the US may get a pipe inspecting robot to help them out.
Harry Asada, the director of MIT’s d’Arbeloff Laboratory for Information Systems and Technology and his colleagues are working on a way to inspect the pipes at a nuclear facility.
“We have 104 reactors in this country”, says Harry Asada. “Fifty-two of them are 30 years or older, and we need immediate solutions to assure the safe operations of these reactors.”
The round robots will have a series of valves with openings on either end. The robot can open and close the valves to use the moving water in the pipe to make it move in different directions.
The robots will eventually be able to pan and tilt the exterior camera and will transmit images in real time using laser optics.
The robots will be used for several excursions or patrols and then break down from radiation.
Link via (Treehugger)
With no human coach at the controls, Virginia Tech's robot soccer team dribbled, passed, and scored its way into the 2010 RoboCup "kid-size" semifinal in Singapore. The tournament founders' goal is a robot team that will defeat the human World Cup champs by 2050. ©Max Aguilera-Hellweg/National Geographic Used with permission.
An upcoming article from the August edition of National Geographic talks about humanizing robots and how they will soon be everywhere humans are. The article talks of many robots, including the Roomba from iRobot and some from Carnegie Mellon, like Snackbot, the snack delivering robot. It also has some great photos from all over the world, including one of Bina48. Shown above is one of the photos from the article, of the Virginia Tech robot soccer team.
Below is an excerpt from the article by Chris Carroll.
The Actroid androids are part of a new generation of robots, artificial beings designed to function not as programmed industrial machines but as increasingly autonomous agents capable of taking on roles in our homes, schools, and offices previously carried out only by humans. The foot soldiers of this vanguard are the Roomba vacuums that scuttle about cleaning our carpets and the cuddly electronic pets that sit up and roll over on command but never make a mess on the rug. More sophisticated bots may soon be available that cook for us, fold the laundry, even babysit our children or tend to our elderly parents, while we watch and assist from a computer miles away.
“In five or ten years robots will routinely be functioning in human environments,” says Reid Simmons, a professor of robotics at Carnegie Mellon.
Such a prospect leads to a cascade of questions. How much everyday human function do we want to outsource to machines? What should they look like? Do we want androids like Yume puttering about in our kitchens, or would a mechanical arm tethered to the backsplash do the job better, without creeping us out? How will the robot revolution change the way we relate to each other? A cuddly robotic baby seal developed in Japan to amuse seniors in eldercare centers has drawn charges that it could cut them off from other people. Similar fears have been voiced about future babysitting robots. And of course there are the halting attempts to create ever willing romantic androids. Last year a New Jersey company introduced a talking, touch-sensitive robot “companion,” raising the possibility of another kind of human disconnect.
In short: Are we ready for them? Are they ready for us?
Are you ready for the robots that will soon be everywhere?
See the photos in the August 2011 issue of National Geographic, available on newsstands July 26.
Also, see more photos at the National Geographic website or check out the full article online at National Geographic.
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